Six Years, eh? That's a long time...

What have you learned?

-The ergonomically ideal rise-run ratio for a staircase is 1:1.5.

And no one cares.

-Alliteration almost always annoys everyone.

And I don't care.

-There are goals and there are distractions.

And the distractions are so damn delicious.

-There are some people who are completely comfortable with being naked in public.

And some smaller set of people who are comfortable with being simultaneously naked and sober in public.

-There are at least fifteen ways to obscure the meaning of a sentence.

But only one ever looks right.

-"Byzantine" means complex and intricate.

Oddly enough, some of the words you learn in college describe college better than they describe whatever context you learn them in. (Art in this case)

-"Synecdoche" means a part can be used to refer to the whole it comprises and vice versa.

And is also part of the pretense for a movie by Charlie Kaufman

-There are goals and there are distractions.

And the distractions are so damn delicious.

-Whether a president is a jack-ass or a bad ass is roughly dependent on geography.

As are many other things.

-I like the word "manifold." I like it so much that I had to edit the above tabulation several times because I kept typing [something else that used the word "manifold" but to type it here would be cheating.]

I think I like... that word... because I watched a lot of Star Trek.

-Mistakes were made but, if I had the chance, I'd make them again.

Ideally, with notes.

-The best ideas come at the worst times.

Like when I am trying to go to sleep, in the shower, or driving my big sexy truck. (I still don't have a tape recorder. (You know, it is the gift-giving season.))

-If you keep throwing emotionally charged-arguments at a wall, some of them are bound to stick.

And then the wall is transmogrified into a parrot.

-Everything is such that it stands in the "like" relationship to someone, but nothing is such that it stands in the "like" relationship to everyone.

And no character map is such that you won't find yourself missing your Mac.

-Death is the absence of presence, but absence is the presence of distance.

Faith and Quantum Physics (dare I say "or Faith in Quantum Physics?") have tidy solutions for this apparent contradiction.

I had a dream, Joe & A Moment like This

"Speaking of ice cream trucks," 24 Fan says, "We downloaded ice cream truck music one day and piped it through the giant speakers on top of our humvee and drove up a mountain."
"That's pretty funny," another advocate for the program 24, who has been able to separate himself from 24 Fan by two feet of space and through expressing an intense curiosity into the various methods one person could employ in killing another person,(popsicle sticks take a special type of commitment)says, "what happened?"
"We got chased by a lot of fat Afghanis," 24 Fan says.
"Why do you have a humvee with giant speakers?" I ask.
"Oh, I'm in Psychological Operations for the Army," 24 Fan tells me, "We disperse pamphlets and what not, but most of what we do is news by truck or radio."
"So propaganda?"
"I put down on my resumé that I have experience in public relations."
"Isn't that the same thing?" I kind-of ask, "Either way, you're selling these guys something."
24 Fan turns away. Popsicle Stick glares at me. Any second he will turn to 24 Fan and resume their conversation about Keifer Sutherland and Chuck Norris. They will stipulate that the outcome of Sutherland vs. Norris will doubtlessly be determined by popular vote. Before that can happen though, Popsicle wants me to realize that everyone is staring at me the way he is, except they have plastic forks.
-------
My parents want me to lose weight. They tell me this as I clean a chicken skeleton of its deep-fried flesh. Tina Fey thinks I've lost weight since the last time she's seen me. She asks me what I'm doing. I suggest that the key is portion control. Instead of making my own mac n' cheese, I just make Kraft's.
"Oh, I love Kraft Mac n' Cheese," Tina tells me, "I'm always doctoring it up though."
"Mmm, me too," I shout, "Parmesean Cheese, the shredded kind not the grated. I don't even recognize grated as a product. It is persona nonfuckinggrata in my fridge. And Red Hot. Adds spice, not just heat."
"I like mine with a can of tuna," Tina says, "I don't know why there's even a market for tuna helper. Cheesy Mac and tuna fish is the shizzle."
My parents are eager to get back to the subject at hand. They point out the evils of processed food. We should all feel the shame. Our future malignant tumors will be orange and sharp cheddar flavored.
"Speaking of imminent death," my mother says, "we're worried about your heart, Elliot. You have too much weight on your chest."
"Yeah," Tina says, "So what do you do for fun?"
"I read. I read pretty much everywhere," I say, "I bathe and I read. I poop and I read. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom reading. Sometimes I try to cook and read and I've had moderate success, but it's not as easy as eating and reading. I like eating and reading."
"He does spend a lot of time in the bathroom," my mother says.
"Right. Have you ever tried reading on a treadmill?" Tina asks/suggests.
"I don't think I'd be very successful with that," I say. A rational person would suggest that as I gave cooking and reading a shot, maybe I should try jogging and reading.
Instead, Tina ran through a list of possible aerobic activities I could attempt while reading. None of them looked or sounded particularly promising.
-------
We are standing in a rainy alley, beating back evil with it's own tools. It's not going well. My comrades are being indiscriminately roasted by a pair of dragons. I am suddenly very alone and powerless. I have a really big sword, but it is clearly made of plastic. I know in my rational mind that my gigantic sword was perfectly functional mere minutes ago, but these ghouls defy my causal understanding of the world I am living in.
Cordelia Chase is there. She is shiny and real like the American Dream is shiny and real to Andrew Carnegie. She is not Cordelia Chase and subsequently Charisma Carpenter of Lifetime Original Movies and Playboy pictorials. This is the Cordelia Chase who would be Charisma Carpenter if "Phil Henderson," "God," and "the Architect of Homo Sapien Evolution" were all identical. She takes my plastic sword from me and I sit on the wet asphalt. Her extensive limbs entirely encase my thorax. I am alone and I tell her so. She asks what happened to my wife by saying "I thought you were married."
"She's gone now," I say, "It's over."
She tells me it's okay.
It's okay.
-------
¹















I would totally support a wealth-redistributing situation just like this is if I didn't suspect that the U.S. Government, via the Library of Congress, has infinitely deeper metaphorical pockets than I or anyone will ever have.
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¹Image is, once again, courtesy of xkcd.com.

an old question.

Spike: It's bollocks, Angel. It's your brand of bollocks from first to last.
Angel: No. You can't ever see the big picture. You can't see any picture.
S: I am talking about something primal, right. Savagery! Brutal, animal instinct!
A: That wins out every time with you. You know the human race has evolved, Spike!
S: Into a bunch of namby-pamby, self-analyzing wankers who could never hope to overcome aggressors...
A: We're bigger. We're smarter. Plus there's a thing called teamwork. Not to mention the superstitious terror of your pure aggressors. [Angel gestures "air quotes."]
S: You just want it to be the way you want it to be.
A: It's not about what I want!
Wesley: Sorry. Is this something we should all be discussing?
A:No.
W: It just sounded a little serious.
A: It was mostly... Theoretical. We...
S: We were just working out a... Look, if cavemen and astronauts got into a fight, who would win?
W: Huh. [pause] You've been yelling at each other for forty minutes about this. [long pause] Do the astronauts have weapons?
A&S: No.

This may be an old question, but I think it's an important one. Fred brings up an interesting caveat: "cavemen live in their 'caves.' they at least have fire."
That unfolds into a lot of "haves" for the cavemen. Cavemen split a rock and have a knife.
I understand it's a lot more complicated than that and Ordovician tool-making is a thousand-years worth of knowledge, but let's assume that cavemen have knives and because they do either astronauts have stone knives or astronauts do not.
I guess that's a question of how you feel about science, not just about scientists, but about the scientific method and how intimately scientists are entangled with technology.
And of all possible modern humans, why astronauts? Is the astronaut the paradigm of human evolution? Are they, instead, the anti-caveman? Cavemen live in caves. Astronauts live far away from caves, in space. Cavemen make their own tools. Astronauts have their tools made for them.
The question, simply put, is:
If Astronauts, as larger predators, and Cavemen, as more enthusiastic predators with sharper teeth, were to identify each other as in-competition for mutually desired resources, who would win?

I think Cavemen would win, but Astronauts would be able to articulate their loss using several theories, but would probably focus on conflict theory.

What about you?